Twitter Tumbles on Concerns About Hacking Activity

Twitter stocks fell nearly 7 percent on Monday after the company said it was investigating unusual traffic that might be from state-sponsored hackers as well as in what appeared to be an unrelated problem, a security company said hackers used the system to try to steal user data. Twitter stated in a website that it found suspicious traffic to a customer-support forum while investigating a security bug that exposed information, such as users’ phone country codes and information about locked accounts. It stated the bug was fixed November 16.

Twitter observed a large amount of traffic to the customer care site coming out of individual Internet IP addresses in China and Saudi Arabia.

“While we cannot confirm purpose or attribution for sure, it’s likely that some of those IP addresses might have ties to state-sponsored celebrities,” the blog said.

“We continue to err on the side of full transparency in this region and have updated law enforcement on our findings,” it stated.

A company spokesman declined to elaborate since Twitter shares posted their biggest fall in two or more months.

The Chinese government consistently denies any participation in hacking or other forms of internet attacks and states it is devoted to breaking down on such behavior.